For the month of February 2016, to coincide with Black History Month, we have lowered the e-book list price of three titles in the University of Illinois Press catalog to $2.99.
Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom by Sonja D. Williams
Posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, Richard Durham creatively chronicled and brought to life the significant events of his times. Durham’s trademark narrative style engaged listeners with fascinating characters, compelling details, and sharp images of pivotal moments in American and African American history and culture. In Word Warrior, award-winning radio producer Sonja D. Williams draws on archives and hard-to-access family records, as well as interviews with family and colleagues like Studs Terkel and Toni Morrison, to illuminate Durham’s astounding career. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the Google Play version here. Buy the Nook version here.
Daisy Turner’s Kin: An African American Family Saga by Jane C. Beck
A daughter of freed African American slaves, Daisy Turner became a living repository of history. The family narrative entrusted to her–“a well-polished artifact, an heirloom that had been carefully preserved”–began among the Yoruba in West Africa and continued with her own long lifetime. In 1983, folklorist Jane Beck began to interview Turner, then one hundred years old and still relating four generations of oral history. Beck uses Turner’s storytelling to build the Turner family saga, using at its foundation the oft-repeated touchstone stories at the heart of their experiences. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the Google Play version here. Buy the Nook version here.
A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music by Robert M. Marovich
In A City Called Heaven, Marovich follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through its growth into the sanctified soundtrack of Chicago’s mainline black Protestant churches. He mines print media, ephemera, and hours of interviews with artists, ministers, and historians–as well as relatives and friends of gospel pioneers–to recover forgotten singers, musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders. He also examines the entrepreneurial spirit that fueled gospel music’s rise to popularity and granted social mobility to a number of its practitioners. As Marovich shows, the music expressed a yearning for freedom from earthly pains, racial prejudice, and life’s hardships. Yet it also helped give voice to a people—and lift a nation. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the Google Play version here. Buy the Nook version here.
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